US, Russia Make Progress on Nuclear Arms Deal

Russian news reports say Russia and the United States are making progress on reaching a new deal by the end of the year to cut their vast Cold War arsenals of nuclear weapons.

Thursday's news reports from Moscow quote Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying the treaty will be ready on time. Lavrov also said the presidents of the two countries will receive a progress report at a summit in September of industrialized and developing nations.

In July, U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, agreed on outlines of a deal to replace the existing 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which expires in December.

The two leaders instructed their negotiators to finalize a pact reducing the number of warheads from 2,200 to somewhere between 1,500 and 1,675. The new agreement also dramatically cuts the number of launch vehicles.